There is a reason this says “By Request.” In a couple of different diaries, fellow climate activists have asked for daily diaries on the reality of climate change. I probably can’t do daily, however I will try to chip in.
This is from my newsletter from a month or so ago.
But I wanted to share it because of the sheer shock on a face when one recognizes their own cognitive dissonance.
Cedar Park, TX is a beautiful suburb just northwest of Austin, full of nice, dedicated people and like anywhere, pockets of MAGA. One asks a lot of questions in moments of confusion. “Was I lied to?”
“Who benefited?” “Can this be fixed?” While esteemed site members like Pakalolo did amazing work on the Lahaina, Hawaii front, a tragedy of unspeakable horror, I did want to take the time to talk about Cedar Park. There are a couple of different approaches the media takes to reporting. One, the preferable one, is the truth.
Usually the best way to find the truth is to interact with victims or witnesses. Sometimes I run across a face of a person so purely incapable of processing the moment, that the only thing that can come out of the person is truth. Raw, unvarnished ugly truth. It comes out in their expressions, in their body language, in the sheer fear in their eyes as they relay the horror of their experience.
Cedar Park did not turn into the unmitigated catastrophe that Lahaina did. But it was a few gusts of wind from doing so. Most people think as long as they don’t live in the middle of the woods they are safe from wildfires. I am quite certain the lady below did too.
The full video is worth your 11 minutes and 40 seconds. It shows what happens when a small fire in a world that has been turned into dried potpourri by climate change has no impediments. It grows, rides the wind, and engulfs.
At 4:43 the woman in the video looks to be someone who never contemplated this possibility. What stood out to me is not that she was shocked she smelled smoke, she was shocked to look out her door and see fire in the sky, on the ground, approaching her home. For this lady, it must have seemed like approaching apocalypse, hence the title. Reading her face, and her eyes, I see a woman who has been emotionally scarred by the experience.
Similar to the 1,000 yard stare in battlefield, she is barely able to collect her thoughts, and express them. In this respect, we get the clearest, most truthfully, least spun or glossed over experience of the events.
For this woman, the world as she knew it in all the years of her life came to an end, and became a distant memory the very moment she opened her door. Her life before that door opened is now what she once knew.
The world she now is processing is a very different place. It is a place where a gust of wind mixed with searing heat and drought could turn your home into ash. It is not the carefree suburb where you can walk your dog, it is now a place where she has to be constantly vigilant to not be torched to death, like dozens of people in Lahaina, by the ravages of climate change.
The human brain when faced with certain realities sometimes fails to process the information. Her struggle is real. At times, the truth does not so much dawn on someone as lands on them. She now has no choice other than to explore the reality of how this happened. In this sense, we have an opportunity. The shock and torment of this experience will burn the layers of mind fat, mixed with lies and misinformation, down to its original state. Perhaps it leaves victims able to finally, after the truth, in fire form, literally chases them down and they have to run for their lives, open to facts of the matter.
The facts are frightening:
Research shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions. Increased drought, and a longer fire season are boosting these increases in wildfire risk. For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1 degree C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year as much as 600 percent in some types of forests. In the Southeastern United States modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.
Once a fire starts—more than 80 percent of U.S. wildfires are caused by people—warmer temperatures and drier conditions can help fires spread and make them harder to put out. Warmer, drier conditions also contribute to the spread of the mountain pine beetle and other insects that can weaken or kill trees, building up the fuels in a forest.
Climate change is not going to discriminate. It won’t be swayed by fancy esplanades, or jewelry stores, or well funded school districts. It won’t avoid your world because your lawn is manicured. It won’t care you have four dogs.
It is here for all of us.
And so it shall be that all of us must be in this battle for survival together.
-ROC
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Love,
-ROC